Japan’s Sendai earthquake disrupted work in that country, shutting down factories, which supply parts to the United States. Thanks to hi-tech supply chain issues, car parts are missing and U.S. factories are beginning to shut down. Last week, General Motors stopped production at its Shreveport Louisiana production facility. This week, the Detroit based car company laid off 59 of its 623 full time employees at its Tonawanda New York production facility — before ultimately halting all production. All of these shutdowns were due to shortages of parts that are produced in Japan.

“
We had just brought back people from work who were laid off so what happens with those people, they’re out of unemployment, so now when they go back on the street they don’t receive anything until they build up their credits.

Bob Coleman and Doug Ebey are both auto workers who say that they had no idea that so many parts came from Japan in the first place and were not prepared for these sobering shutdowns. Bob Coleman is the shop chairman of United Auto Workers Local 774 in the Tonawanda GM plant, and Doug Ebey is the head of the United Auto Workers Local 2166 in Shreveport, Louisiana.

Guests:

Produced by:

Tags:

Comments [2]

Brandon
from Texas

As someone who has an older brother serving in Iraq right now I'm pretty disgusted that The Takeaway has ignored Iraq day after day. As long as we have soldiers in the country, I think the media should be covering it. I guess Obama's big withdrawal turned out to just be a withdrawal of the press. Cpl. Brandon S. Hocking died in combat in Iraq Monday. The war hasn't ended.